


dreams last for so long, even after you're gone

by Duck_Life



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Androids, Dreams, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flowers, Gen, Identity Issues, sweet dreams for soji 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-22 13:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22983739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Soji dreams. A man with yellow eyes and an orange cat tells her a story.
Relationships: Soji Asha & Data
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50
Collections: Star Trek Fics





	dreams last for so long, even after you're gone

Soji steps into the room, trying to ignore the trepidation screaming at her to turn and run. There are two men leaning over a table, tinkering with… something. A thing. A toy. "We did it, Soong," one of the men says, pride evident in his voice. 

Soji creeps closer even though she knows what she's going to see on the table— a wooden doll, in pieces. Her own blank eyes staring up at nothing. 

The other man speaks— "I don't know, Bruce, I don't know if—" and then he looks up, directly  _ at her _ , his blue eyes piercing and questioning and now Soji does scream, now Soji does run. She turns and tries to run away from the men and the doll on the table. She runs, but her path is stopped by row upon row of fragrant orchids. 

"No," she moans, bracing her hands against a table, the pops of color in the blooms blurring before her eyes. 

There is a woman tending to the orchids. She checks the stakes tied to their stems to make sure the orchids are growing upright and sturdy. Soji watches her spread a bit of fertilizer in one pot, and then the woman glances up at her. "Oh," she says, her kind eyes sweeping over Soji. "Are you lost?"

"I…" Soji looks behind her, but the men and the doll are gone, nothing in their place but more plants. Succulents and flowering shrubs and bonsai trees fill the room around her, as if she's stumbled upon some sort of arboretum. "I'm not sure."

"That's okay," the woman says, tucking a lock of her shiny black hair behind one ear. "It's easy to get turned around in here. I'm Keiko— what's your name?"

"S— Soji."

Keiko smiles. "That's a beautiful name," she says, weaving around the orchids to come closer. "Where were you trying to go, Soji? Maybe I can help you."

"I'm… not sure." Where is she trying to go? Somewhere away. Somewhere safe. "I think… I think I'm trying to go home."

"Of course," Keiko says. "He's been waiting for you."

"Who?" Soji asks, thinking of the men from before. 

"A friend of mine," Keiko says, beckoning with one hand. "Come on." Her choices are to follow Keiko or stay here swimming in the sweet stench of these orchids. She goes with Keiko. 

Keiko leads her down a curving corridor. The soft lighting and soft carpeting are so different from the bleak interior she became used to on the Artifact. Everything here is warmer, more welcoming. 

The walls are covered in portraits and paintings. Soji slows to look at some of them— an oil painting of a man in an old-fashioned Starfleet uniform, his eyes masked by some kind of visor; a Picasso-esque painting of an orange cat. 

She sees her own childhood drawings, and Dahj’s, mixed in with the paintings. In a childlike sketch she doesn’t recognize, something huge and red with spindling spider arms attacks a group of fleeing stick figures. Soji shudders. “Are we safe?”

“In the grand scheme of things? No,” Keiko tells her honestly. “But here, now? Yes.” She keeps walking down the hall. Soji wrenches herself away from the crayon drawings and hurries to keep up. 

Keiko leads her to a room. The doors slide open, inviting her in. “I need to get back to the arboretum,” Keiko says apologetically. “But it was wonderful to meet you, Soji.” She turns and walks away, leaving Soji staring wide-eyed at the open door. 

She enters. 

Inside, there is a console and a bookshelf and a small sitting area. The shelf is stacked with knickknacks and cat toys, an old volume of Shakespeare’s works, a deck of cards and a stack of poker chips. In the center of a room, a man in that same mustard-yellow Starfleet uniform has his back to her, his attention focused on the easel before him. 

Soji peeks over the man’s shoulder. It looks as if he’s painting a family portrait— himself in the middle, a young woman beside him clad in fuschia and purple, two twin girls in the foreground. Somehow, Soji knows that one of the girls is meant to be her. “Excuse me?” she says, almost a whisper. 

The man turns around, recognition dawning on his face. “Soji,” he says gently. He extends the paintbrush to her. “Would you like to finish it?” 

Soji looks at the painting, then back at the artist. “No,” she says, thinking of Dahj as a spike of grief goes through her. 

“That is alright,” the artist says. He sets the paintbrush on the easel and gestures to the sofa. “Sit, please. Would you like a cup of tea, or maybe coffee?” 

“No… thank you, I’m fine,” she stammers. The artist takes a seat on the couch, and then he looks up inquisitively. Waiting for her. Soji doesn’t know him, but she doesn't think he would hurt her or lie to her. And Keiko led her here, and for some reason she also trusts Keiko. Soji sits. “Do you know me?”

The artist nods. 

“Am I…” What? A monster? A doll? “Am I a thing?”

The artist’s eyes look immeasurably sad, and he shakes his head assertively. “You are not, of course you are not a thing,” he promises, clasping his hands in his lap. “You are a living being, a person, with consciousness and rights and an imagination.” 

Soji nods, processing that. But— “But I’m not human.”

“No,” the artist says, “you are not.”

“You’re not, either.”

“I am an android,” he says. “I spent a good portion of my life grappling with the question of my existence. I cannot promise I have all the answers, Soji, but I will help you as much as I can.” 

“But…” All this, she’s certain now, is happening inside her head. Just another dream. “But you’re not even real.”

“A part of me lives in you,” he says. “I am always with you, Soji, just as I was with Dahj. I want to help you in any way I can… and yes, that may mean meeting you here, in your dreams.” She can’t recall having dreams like this before, just the one, the nightmare of her stumbling upon her dad in his workshop. That same dream, over and over. The dream Narek used against her, to hurt her. 

“So,” Soji says, “is this… all this… is this a dream? Or… or a program?”

“Things can be two things,” he says. 

A cat jumps up onto her lap, nuzzling at her chin before crossing the couch to get to the artist. He scratches her behind the ears. “That’s the cat from the painting,” Soji realizes, remembering the picture in the hall.

“Correct.” The cat curls in the artist’s lap, purring. 

Soji’s eyes swivel toward the work in progress on the easel. “Why were you painting… that?” Soji asks. 

“It is a picture of my family.”

“Does it make you sad?” Soji asks. 

The artist tilts his head. “It makes me sad and happy,” he says. “Emotions, I have found, can be complex and confusing, stacked on top of each other.” 

“Yeah,” Soji says, feeling scared and curious and safe and excited. “I’ve found that, too.” Her memories swirl and sink like soap bubbles, or dirt spiraling down a drain. She strokes the orange cat from head to tail, fascinated by the softness of her fur and the vibration of her purring. 

And then Soji stands suddenly. The cat makes a disgruntled noise. Soji strides to the easel, staring more closely at the painting. 

“This is Dahj,” she says, pointing to one of the twin girls. She does not know how she knows, but she does. 

“Yes,” the artist says. 

“Was she real?” 

“Yes.”

“What about our mom?” 

The artist’s yellow eyes look downward. “That is a more difficult question,” he acknowledges. “Dahj was an android. Like you and like me. Your mother was a fragment of your programming, rather than a separate being.”

“But I  _ remember _ her,” Soji says, pacing across the room. “I remember being a child. My mother… she took me ice skating. She brushed my hair at night, she sang to me when I was scared. And all that, that wasn’t real?”

“It was… a story,” the artist says. “But if it mattered to you, then it is important. Stories tell us who we are and why we care about the things that matter to us. Even humans place great value in stories.” 

Soji looks at the artist. For the first time, she notices the painting hanging behind him over the couch— a bird’s wing against a blue backdrop. “A story,” she repeats. 

He nods. Then— “Would you like to hear another story?” 

Soji reclaims her seat on the couch. She says, “Okay.”

The artist pets his cat. “There once was a man. He died for his crew. He did not know that his components had been pilfered for use in cybernetic experiments by a scientist he believed he could trust.”

“This doesn’t sound like a happy story,” Soji says. 

“I believe it will have a happy ending.”

“You don’t know for sure?” 

He looks at her carefully. “It has not ended yet,” he says. “Would you like to hear the rest? At least, the rest so far?” 

She thinks about Dahj and her mother who was a story. She thinks about Picard. She thinks about Keiko and the cat and all the things she seems to know, innately— the tunes she catches herself humming, the sonnets she can recite word-for-word. 

“Please,” she tells the artist, settling in, “tell me the rest.” 


End file.
